The Home Office is poised to award G4S a lucrative contract to run an immigration detention centre – even though the security firm’s management of the scandal-hit facility is the subject of serious allegations of drug use, violence and bullying.

Sources said the company is in pole position to be awarded the £150 million contract for Brook House, near Gatwick, once again, after it came up for renewal earlier this year.

Details of the process have emerged just three months after a string of allegations in a BBC Panorama documentary on the centre, which is next to Gatwick Airport.

A fishing boat overcrowded by Syrian refugees approaches at a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos, pictured, after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea

G4S was subsequently hauled in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee, prompting the company’s UK president, Peter Neden, to say he was ‘ashamed’ of what he had seen in the programme.

He told the committee ten staff had immediately been suspended. Since then, six have been dismissed and the centre’s director, Ben Saunders, has resigned.

Home Affairs committee chair Yvette Cooper said at the hearing there was ‘abuse, mistreatment and bullying; a restraint expert using and encouraging very racist abuse; threats and reports of violence and aggression towards detainees,’ shown in the documentary.

She also said there was, ‘one member of staff saying, “Hit him with the edge anywhere between the knee and the throat,” another saying, “If he dies, he dies,” and another saying, “I’m going to put you to f***ing sleep” ’.

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She added there had been ‘a failure to properly handle serious mental health problems, to document restraint and to intervene to stop drugs circulating’.

During the hearing, company bosses insisted the issue was with individuals, not the firm.

But Cooper told The Mail on Sunday last night: 'The company has failed to give any satisfactory answers about how it allowed this to happen or why we should have any confidence in them to prevent it happening again.

'An investigation is still under way and the Select Committee is still considering the damning evidence we have heard.

The company running Brook House Immigration Removal Centre, pictured, next to Gatwick Airport in West Sussex has been criticised for abusing detainees

'Under these circumstances it would be a dereliction of duty for the Home Office to award G4S a new contract to provide similar services again.’

The contract is expected to be awarded early next year. Other bidders have included Serco, Mitie and Geo. The Home Office declined to comment.

Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK’s business and human rights programme director, said: ‘If G4S’s bid is successful, the Government is signalling that ill-treatment of detainees is not a barrier to companies gaining approval to run detention centres.’

G4S said it had appointed consultancy Verita to conduct an independent review ‘to understand the extent and root causes of the treatment of detainees at Brook House’.

Neden said the review would examine issues including ‘violence prevention, the use of force, the proper reporting of incidents, the use of technology such as body-worn cameras and CCTV [and] the availability of drugs.

‘It will also cover the attitudes and behaviour of staff towards detainees and the reasons why staff did not use the whistleblowing procedures to report their colleagues’ behaviour.’

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